Monday, November 26, 2012

The Greatest Tennis Player of All Time – Part 1

The tennis tour has entered its short end-of-year hiatus1.
For the first season since 2003, the just completed (2012) tennis season was
highly competitive throughout, with no dominant player. Four different men won
the four grand slams2, and the remaining major tournaments were
snatched up by the top five players. It says something that the man who won the
most matches and tournaments (76 and 7), fifth ranked David Ferrer, was no
one’s pick as the player of the year. In the end, Novak Djokovic was just a bit
better than Roger Federer and Andy Murray and finished top ranked for the
second consecutive year. Rafael Nadal, despite not playing for the last six
months due to a career-threatening knee injury, still finished ranked fourth.
It all sets up for an interesting 2013, a season that will kick-off in just
five weeks.

I thought this “off-season” break would be a good time to
debut my rankings of the Greatest (male)
tennis players Of All Time; the proverbial GOATs. In tennis, perhaps more than any other
sport, there is long and heated discussion among fans and commentators about
who’s the best ever. The entire sport is based on rankings; tournaments are
structured on a hierarchy that descends from number 1. And unlike team
sports, the discussion of rankings, of greatness, can be focused on each man.
Absent are the nuances that make ranking teams (and players in team sports) so
difficult, subtleties of teamwork, synergies between players, the interplay of
complex team-based tactics and collective talent. No, instead, in tennis it seems
that the play of each man – his skill, his will, his mind – are all on display.
It’s all there to be witnessed and all measured in his results. There aren't any ambiguities. Points are
awarded for every result, and rankings listed. And so it follows that if we can
rank tennis players at any given time then we should be able to rank them over
all times. We should be able to identify the greatest of all time.

Of course this assertion presumes a lot, or stated
differently, it ignores a lot of complicating and uncomfortable factors. Factors
like changes in racket and string technology over time; varying court surfaces,
qualities, and speeds; the regularly changing structure of the tennis tour and the tournaments
that make up the yearly calendar; and of course improving fitness and athleticism,
and a general broadening and deepening of the professional tennis field. All
these things make it problematic to compare, say, the circa 1969 wood-racket-wielding
Rod Laver, charging the net on a fast and dodgy grass court, on the one hand,
with the 2006 version of Roger Federer and his hi-tech composite racket
whacking heavily top-spinned groundstrokes from the baseline of a slow hard
court, one the other. This comparison is at minimum a challenge and perhaps impossible.
Laver and Federer will never play one another, so we’ll never really know who
the better of the two is. So we should just get this out front and center:
determining the greatest player of all time, the real GOAT, is a fan’s fantasy.
We can make arguments, but we’ll never have a final answer.

But it’s still fun to have the discussion and to make a
case, so in that spirit I’ve developed a quantifiable approach to determine the
greatest player of all time.

A Quantitative
Approach
Just this past year the Tennis Channel presented a list of the 100 greatest players of all time (men and
women), based on career achievements and the perspectives and opinions of
tennis players, journalists, and historians. Similar lists have been compiled
in the past by Tennis magazine other tennis-
and sports-related websites and publications. These lists are always
qualitative in nature. They attempt to rank players and identify the best based
on a range of factors from day-in-day-out results to stylistic innovations, and
influence on the sport, which is all fine by me. If we concede that identifying
a GOAT is by nature difficult to impossible, then trying to balance all the
factors in a qualitative measure is a reasonable approach. But for a numbers
oriented person like me, it’s a whole lot less fun, and well, imprecise.3
So I’ve come up with an approach that considers results and rankings over a
full career to rank players and identify the one and only GOAT.

Before I lay out the factors that go into my formula, a few
ground rules:

The list is
restricted to the Open Era only, the period that started at the 1968 French Open when professional players were permitted to play in the
grand slam tournaments. It’s during the Open Era when all the best players,
amateur and professional alike, played in the sport’s biggest tournaments.
Before then grand slam results were skewed because many of the best (read:
professional) players weren’t there to compete for the titles. I don’t want to
gloss over this point, some great players (e.g., Bill Tilden, Don Budge, Poncho
Gonzalez) played entirely or mostly before the Open Era and they are completely
excluded from my rankings. For players whose careers spanned the Open Era, only
the Open Era accomplishments are counted. This is in effect a list of the
greatest players of the Open Era.

The list includes if and for how long a player was ranked
number 1, but the rankings didn’t start until 1973, so for the period from 1968
until 1973, the top ranked player (whoever that was at any time) loses out in
my system. There’s nothing that can be done about that, though I have
identified who would qualify as the year-end number 1 based on the season long
results.

This list is of the top men players. A similar list, using
the same approach could be made for women (I should probably dedicate a post to
the greatest women players at some point).

The Formula
We’re discussing the very best players, so three broad
categories of achievement capture, I think, who’s should be considered as among
the best. These are (in no particular order) the time spent ranked number 1,
success in grand slam tournaments, and “winning” in the general sense. Number 1
ranking is important because a player can hardly be considered the best if he isn't the best at any given time. Grand slam success is important because the
best players win the most prestigious, coveted titles, and overall winning is
important because that’s what champions do.

So I’m breaking these three broad categories into 12
specific measures, with points assigned for the discrete accomplishments within
each measure. They are:

Number 1 Ranking
– was the player ever ranked number 1 (10 points),

Weeks Ranked Number 1
– the longer a player was ranked number 1, the longer they could stay above the
rest of the field, the more credit they deserve (2 points for every five weeks
a player is ranked number 1),

Year End Number 1 –
there is special recognition for being the year-end number 1 because that
player was by definition the best player of the season (10 points for each year
ending number 1),

Grand Slam Titles –
winning one of the four grand slam tournaments is the highest accomplishment
for a tennis player. Each one is highly coveted and very hard to win (seven,
best-of-five set matches). These tournaments are also the only tennis
achievements that resonate in the larger sports culture. Further, it's only the grand slams that can be compared over time, as most other tournaments come in and out of existence over relatively short periods of time, especially in the pre-ATP Tour era (15 points for each
title),

Grand Slam Finals –
just making a grand slam final is noteworthy, and I think it’s fair to say that
appearing in a grand slam final is a greater achievement than winning a lesser
tournament (5 points for each grand slam final loss),

Calendar Year Grand
Slam – winning all four grand slams in one year is the greatest
accomplishment in tennis and deserves bonus points for the difficulty of the
feat and the historic nature of the accomplishment (50 points for each calendar
year grand slam),

3 Grand Slams in One Year
– winning three of the four grand slams in one year is a rare feat (at
least until recently) and demonstrates clear dominance over the rest of the
tennis field. It deserves bonus points for the difficulty of the feat (25
points for each year winning three grand slams),

2 Grand Slams in One
Year – winning two of the four grand slams in one year is a clear
indication of superior play and deserves bonus points for the difficulty of the
feat (10 points for each year winning two grand slams),

Career Grand Slam –
winning all four grand slams at least once is a very rare feet (almost as rare
as winning a calendar year grand slam) and deserves bonus points for the
difficulty and historic nature of the accomplishment (50 points for a career
grand slam),

Titles – winning
tournaments (other than the grand slams) is what the best players do (3 points
for each (non-grand slam) title),

Career Match Wins –
winning matches is the core of being a great player (1 point for every 20 match
wins),

Career Winning
Percentage – the best players should win a high percentage of their matches
(1 point for a 0.700 winning percentage, with one additional point for each
0.010 increment over 0.700).

Add all the points up and you get a player’s total; the
higher the score, the better. I make no claims that this is a definitive
inventory of the elements that should go into determining the best of all time,
or that the points allocated for each measure are appropriate. The old axiom of
garbage in, garbage out should be heeded with any formulation like this; it has
to pass the sniff test. I think this approach is at least a reasonable start, but
let’s see how it computes for an individual player, and I’ll go ahead and pick
the current number 1 player, Novak Djokovic.

Novak Djokovic’s GOAT Points:

No. 1 Ranking: 10
points (he’s currently ranked No. 1),

Weeks Ranked No. 1: 24.8
points (he’ll have been ranked No. 1 for 62 weeks through the end of this
year),

Grand Slam Finals: 20
points (he’s appeared in four other grand slam finals),

Calendar Year Grand Slam: 0 points (no calendar year grand slam),

3 Grand Slams in One Year: 25 points (he won three grand slams in 2011),

2 Grand Slams in One Year: 0 points (he’s never won as many as two grand slams in any other
year),

Career Grand Slam: 0
points (Novak has never won French Open),

Titles: 87 points
(he has won 29 non-grand slam tournaments),

Career Match Wins: 23
points (he has won 469 matches over his career so far),

Career Winning Percentage: 10 points (he has a career 0.792 match winning percentage).

You add all of those points up and you get a total of 295 points (rounding to the nearest
point). At the risk of taking some suspense out of this list, the total of 295
points put Djokovic thirteenth among Open Era players. That seems reasonable to
me. Certainly Djokovic has put himself into the discussion as one of the best
ever, but he hasn’t done enough just yet to be among the top 5 or even 10. (It’s
safe to say that baring major injury or some hard to imagine loss of form, he’ll
be climbing this list in the coming years.)

So, the formula passes the basic test of reasonability, I
applied it to every player who was ranked number 1 or won a grand slam in the
Open Era. The results make sense to me, but judge for yourself. Eighteen
players amassed at least 200 points (arbitrary number), so that’s where I’ll
start the countdown of the greatest players of all time.

Before we get to the list, I offer an important observation
about this ranking system. This approach rewards both high-level and long-term
success. The more wins, titles, weeks ranked number 1, etc., the higher a
player’s point total and the higher they will be ranked on the list. This
ranking system doesn’t reward qualitative greatness. A player may have played
brilliantly, may have appeared superior to his opponents, or to borrow some
inflated rhetoric, he may have displayed strokes of genius on the court. By the
eye that player may have appeared greater than others. That qualitative measure
isn’t captured here. For instance, for many people John McEnroe displayed
genius on court while Ivan Lendl displayed only consistent power. Many may
consider the style of McEnroe to have
been superior to the style of Lendl.
Tennis lends itself to the beautiful: in movement, in ball striking, in
shot-making. Tennis fans often love the style as much as the results. This
quantitative rankings approach is based solely on results, it’s indifferent to
style, indifferent to the many things that happen on court that aren’t measured
in the results. The reader is cautioned to consider the “blind” perspective of
these rankings as we countdown to the greatest of all time.

Okay, that’s enough background, on to the rankings.

The Greatest Players
of All Time (Numbers 18 through 11)

Honorable Mention:
Among active players (who aren’t ranked in this list), only Andy Murray has
demonstrated a level of success that could get him onto this list before his
career is over. By this system his career points stand at 128, well behind each
of the 18 men listed below, but well within range of this group if he has a few
more good years (and wins some more grand slam tournaments). This list isn’t
static (it contains several active players after all), and other current or
future players will join it. But other than Murray, I don’t know who that might
be with the possible exception of Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro.

18. Jim Courier (1988-2000)

Jim Courier was a hard hitting baseliner, perfectly
constructed for slow hard courts and even slower clay. His career hit a peak
from summer 1991 through summer 1993 when he made all seven of his grand slam
finals (winning four), and rising to number 1, including finishing 1992 as the
best player in the world (and starting a string of eight years with Americans
finishing at the top of the rankings). Courier had some decent moments after
1993, but his career never approach those heights and he couldn’t hang with his
fellow Americans Agassi and Sampras.

Other Noteworthy Achievements: Courier was the first of the
great wave of American players of the 1990s (which included Agassi, Pete
Sampras, Michael Chang) to be ranked number 1.

Iconic Moment: 1991 French Open Final. Courier played
favorite and fellow American Andre Agassi in the final (Agassi was seeded
fourth while Courier was seeded ninth). He lost the first set 3-6, and fell
behind in the second set 1-3, and down another break point when rain came and
delayed the match. Courier was sharper when they returned and stormed back to
win the second set 6-4, but Agassi dominated the third, downing Courier 2-6. It
was then that Courier’s mental strength came to the fore. He quickly turned the
tables on Agassi, dominating the fourth set, winning 6-1, and at 4-4 in the
fifth set he earned the decisive service break. He held easy to win his first
grand slam, and the first of four he would win over the next year-and-a-half.

17. Lleyton Hewitt (1998-current)
Like Courier, Hewitt is a scrappy baseliner known for his
dogged style. He became the youngest player ever ranked number 1 in 2001 at age
20. Hewitt’s precise groundstrokes allowed him to dominate the tour from the
middle of 2001 through early 2003 when he won both of his grand slams. He
occupied the top of the rankings in the brief period after the decline of Pete
Sampras and the rise of Roger Federer. Unfortunately for Hewitt, once Federer
got his measure, his career was bound to be eclipsed. His dogged play continues
but bigger, stronger opponents, and a rash of injuries have relegated him to
lower status over the last five or six years.

Other Noteworthy Achievements: Hewitt is one of the few
players in history to be ranked number 1 for every week of a calendar year,
achieving the feat in 2002.

Iconic Moment: 2001 U.S. Open Final. In his first grand slam
final, Hewitt demolished 13 time grand slam champion Pete Sampras in three
sets. It was probably his most impressive victory and signaled to the world
that a new champion had arrived. It was one of Sampras’ most lopsided grand
slam defeats.

16. John Newcombe
(1967-81)

John Newcombe was the last in the great wave of Australian
players that dominated tennis from the 1950s through the mid-1970s.
Unfortunately, his ranking on this list is suppressed a bit because his early
career was played before the Open Era. Newcombe was an attacking
serve-and-volley player, which was common at the time but rarely seen now. He
was also an exceptional doubles player, winning 17 doubles grand slams.

Total Points: 237
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 8
Year-End Number 1: 2 (1970-71)
Grand Slams: 5 titles / 2 finals
Career Titles (all): 32
Career Wins (PCT): 429 (0.759)
Other Noteworthy Achievements: Newcombe had a very
successful career before turning professional including winning Wimbledon and
U.S. Open in 1967.

Iconic Moment: 1970 Wimbledon Final. Newcombe defeated his
countryman Ken Rosewall in five long sets to win the 1970 Wimbledon title. It
was the first of the five grand slams he would win in the Open Era (and third
of the seven he won overall). For both 1970 and 1971 Newcombe was considered as
the best player (along with Rod Laver and Rosewall in 1970 and Stan Smith in
1971).

15. Ilie Nastase
(1966-85)
Nastase’s career also started before the Open Era, but he
came into his own in the early 1970s. Nastase was known for his style and all
court game, and his antics, a sort of European John McEnroe with a bit more
playfulness and a bit less skill than the American.

Total Points: 287
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 40
Year-End Number 1: 1 (1973)
Grand Slams: 2 titles / 3 finals
Career Titles (all): 57
Career Wins (PCT): 755 (0.725)
Other Noteworthy Achievements: Nastase was the first man to
be ranked number 1 when the rankings were introduced in 1973. He held the top
spot for the first 40 weeks of the rankings (the only 40 weeks he would be
number 1).

Iconic Moment: 1972 U.S. Open Final. Nastase won his first
grand slam title by defeating Arthur Ashe at the 1972 U.S. Open, in a long five
set match. That was in an era when the U.S. Open was played on grass, and it’s
noteworthy that Nastase won the grand slams on grass and clay (1973 French Open). Few players have proven capable of winning grand slams on both
surfaces.

14. Mats Wilander
(1969-85)

Mats Wilander followed Bjorn Borg as
the top player from Sweden, not long after Borg left the stage, Wilander won
his first grand slam at the 1982 French Open, at the tender age of just 17. He
won four grand slams by the age of 20, the youngest man ever to achieve that
feat. He was ranked in the top 5 for every year from 1983 through 1987, but it
was 1988 when he reached his apogee, winning three grand slams and surmounting perennial
number 1 Ivan Lendl. However his fall from the top was quick as he couldn’t
sustain the level that had carried him to number 1. He won just one title after
1988 and by 1990 he had fallen out of the top 40. Had he been able to maintain
his level for just a bit longer, he’d surely rank higher on this list.

Total Points: 288
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 20
Year-End Number 1: 1 (1988)
Grand Slams: 7 titles / 4 finals
Career Titles (all): 33
Career Wins (PCT): 571 (0.720);
Other Noteworthy Achievements: Wilander won three grand
slams in 1988 (Australia, French Open, U.S. open), the only man to do this
between Jimmy Conners in 1975 and Roger Federer in 2004.

Iconic Moment: 1988 U.S. Open Final. Wilander did the almost
impossible, beating Ivan Lendl in the final of the U.S. Open. Coming into the
match Lendl had won 27 straight matches at Flushing Meadows. The match was long
and hard, going a full five sets. The final set was back and forth, but
Wilander broke late and withstood Lendl’s pressure to close out the match in
just under five hours. Wilander had conquered the mighty Lendl and established
himself as the new number 1 (short-lived though his reign would be).

13. Novak Djokovic
(2003-current)
I’ve written plenty on Novak Djokovic over the last couple
of years. It seemed that his all-around excellent game would only ever be good
enough for third best on tour; winning the tour scraps left from Federer and
Nadal. Then 2011 happened. Seemingly out of the blue Djokovic realized all of
his potential and became nearly unbeatable, winning 64 of his first 66 matches,
three grand slams and putting Nadal and Federer clearly in his rearview mirror.
He just finished 2012 ranked number 1 and he’s the odd-on favorite to stay
there in 2013. Who knows where he might end up on this ranking, but inside the
top 10 seems almost certain.

Total Points: 295
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 62 (as of December 31, 2012)
Year-End Number 1: 2 (2011-12)
Grand Slams: 5 titles / 4 finals
Career Titles (all): 34
Career Wins (PCT): 469 (0.792)
Other Noteworthy Achievements: Djokovic won three grand slams
in 2011 (Australia, Wimbledon, U.S. Open) becoming just the sixth man to do
this during the Open Era.

Iconic Moment: 2011 Wimbledon Final. Djokovic seemed to
overcome one challenge after another in the first half of 2011, most notably
beating Nadal four times, including two times on clay. But it was in the
Wimbledon Final the Djokovic showed that the dynamics of the tour had changed.
He dominated Nadal en route to a four set win, ending the Spaniard’s 20 match
Wimbledon winning streak in the process. There could be no doubt, there was the
new top dog on Tour.

12. Boris Becker
(1984-99)

Boris Becker was perhaps the most precocious of the many
great players on this list, winning his first grand slam at Wimbledon, in just
his fourth grand slam tournament, at 17 (a younger 17 than when Wilander won French
Open in 1982). He possessed perhaps the first truly monstrous serve in the game
and his basic big serve-put-away volley approach adumbrated the style that
would come to epitomize the tennis tour in the early and mid-90s.

Total Points: 306
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 12
Year-End Number 1: 0
Grand Slams: 6 titles / 4 finals
Career Titles (all): 49
Career Wins (PCT): 713 (0.769)
Other Noteworthy Achievements: Becker won the 1985 Wimbledon
title when he was just 17 years old. He would win it again as an 18-year-old in
1986.

Iconic Moment: 1985 Wimbledon Final. Nothing could compare
to Becket’s 1985 Wimbledon break-through. The red-haired German was young and
bold. His booming serve and diving volleys electrified the English crowd. Despite
being unseeded and unheralded, Becker kept winning. His opponent, American by
way of South African Kevin Curran, was game, but no one was going to deny
Becker his first grand slam title. He won in four sets and the Becker
phenomenon had arrived.

11. Guillermo Vilas
(1969-92)
Guillermo Vilas may be the greatest player never ranked
number 1 (at least in the Open Era). He won more matches, more titles, and more
grand slams than anyone else not ranked number 1. In 1977, his finest season,
Vilas won a startling 16 titles, including two grand slams (French Open and
U.S. Open), and an amazing 130 matches. By current rankings practice, he would have
finished the year ranked number 1 (he finished the year ranked second behind
Jimmy Connors). All told, Vilas was ranked inside the top 10 for nine
consecutive years (1974-83).

Total Points: 316
Weeks Ranked Number 1: 0
Year-End Number 1: 0
Grand Slams: 4 titles / 4 finals
Career Titles (all): 62
Career Wins (PCT): 923 (0.765)
Other Noteworthy Achievements: In 1977 Vilas won a
still-standing record 46 consecutive matches. This record has since been
approached by John McEnroe, Roger Federer, and Novak Djokovic, but no one has
bettered it.

Iconic Moment: 1977 U.S. Open Final. Vilas won four grand
slams but the best triumph may have been at the U.S. Open in 1977 when he took
down Jimmy Connors in five sets. 1977 was the last in a short three year
stretch (1975-77) when the U.S. Open was played on clay. Vilas took advantage of
his favored slow surface to take command of the match after Connors won the
first set. Vilas won going away 6-0 in the fourth.

1. Short, but actually longer than in past seasons
when the Davis Cup Final was traditionally played on the first weekend in
December. A couple of years ago the ATP agreed to compress the end of the
season to give players a bit more rest before the tour heats up down in the
antipodes in January.

2. Australia: (1) Novak Djokovic; French Open:
(4) Rafael Nadal; Wimbledon: (2) Roger Federer; U.S. Open: (3) Andy Murray.
Djokovic also won three of the ATP 1000 tournaments (Miami, Canada, and
Shanghai) and the year-end World Tour Finals, Federer won three ATP 1000
tournaments (Indian Wells, Madrid, and Cincinnati), Nadal won two of them
(Monte Carlo and Rome), Andy Murray won the Olympics, and David Ferrer won the
final ATP 1000 tournaments in Paris.

3. Of course given the context of this discussion,
it’s worth emphasizing that precision is not synonymous with accuracy.

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Conroyis Jeffrey Roberta, a transportation engineer/renaissance man with the mind of an analyst and the eye of an artist. Bursting with energy, sharp as a razor, and fast with the facts, Conroy is a deep thinker with a love for sports, history, literature, movies, music, physics, philosophy...the list goes on and on. He is proud to call Baltimore, MD, his personal stomping ground, but he also loves to travel around the world.

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